Heart Attack Tests for All?

July 10, 2006 -- It's time to change the way doctors predict heart attacks and stroke, says a group of prominent cardiologists. They call for routine use of CT scans to directly measure artery-clogging plaque, or ultrasounds to directly measure narrowing of the arteries.

Nearly every man aged 45-75, and nearly every woman aged 55-75, would get at least one of these tests under a new recommendation from the Association for Eradication of Heart Attack (AEHA). The group's Screening for Heart Attack Prevention and Education (SHAPE) task force came up with the proposal.

Reliance on the new testing technology would be a big change from current medical practices.

AEHA founder and president Morteza Naghavi, MD, chaired the SHAPE task force. "For a long time in cardiology, we dictated to individuals based on risk factors in large populations -- which is inaccurate," Naghavi tells WebMD. "Now we have ways to evaluate a person's risk of heart attack. We have the means to look into the heart and see plaque. We now have individualized risk assessment."

The new guidelines will change health care, predicts another SHAPE task force member, Prediman K. Shah, MD, head of cardiology at

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and professor of medicine at UCLA.

"It is a sea change in practice," Shah tells WebMD. "Since heart attack risk starts in arteries, we should be looking there. If you can identify plaque in a patient, then this individual -- regardless of risk factors -- is actually at risk. If you want to identify people with heart disease, don't look at risk factors. We say, look directly at where the plaque is."